‘Long history of US school shootings means Obama is right, NRA is wrong’

The Christian Science Monitor

In an opinion piece for The Christian Science Monitor, Jack Schneider, assistant professor of education at the College of the Holy Cross, wrote about the country’s long history with school shootings and advocated for stricter gun laws. The piece was published immediately following President Obama’s press conference announcing plans to reduce gun violence.

“The first school shooting, in fact, is older than America,” Schneider wrote. “It took place in 1764 when four Lenape warriors shot a Pennsylvania teacher in front of his students. Since then, motives have varied, but the effect has always been similarly grim.”

He continued, “What the public needs to understand is that school shootings are tragically not a new problem caused solely by recent social or cultural shifts. This is an old problem, and the historical record is littered with stories of firearms ending lives in classrooms. But as those guns have gotten bigger, faster, and more accurate over the years, their death toll has become greater. And still many Americans ache for a past in which guns protected liberty and did no harm. But that past is imagined.”

“Many of Mr. Obama’s proposals will meet with hard resistance in Washington, backed by a powerful NRA lobby,” he wrote. But leaders in Congress with the moral courage to take on the gun issue must act now…”